Spot Runner announced that it is laying off 115 people, or less than 30 percent of its staff. It confirmed that a big chunk of the layoffs are coming from its local sales division, formerly known as Weblistic.
Company officials say they are getting mean and lean for the recession, but that Spot Runner has significant cash …

Are classifieds fated, by definition, to be “dumb” all-you-can-eat listings? Or can certain categories be remade as performance-based listings a la Google that bring best matches to the top, offering higher revenue in return for a better match and conversion?
That’s the question posed by Vast.com, a San Francisco-based company working with “inventory” classifieds: autos, real estate …

Are the small-business “home and trade service” advertisers that populate PennySaver and American Classifieds a good bet to buy search packages? That’s the question being posed by American Classifieds, the second-largest classified publisher franchise with 6,000 editions.
The company signed this summer with WebVisible to provide search tools and sales training for 600 sales reps. WebVisible …

We’re just about ready to go with Interactive Local Media 2008, which is Nov. 19-21 in Santa Clara, in the heart of Silicon Valley. It should be a very important, game-defining event — and the first one for The Kelsey Group in the new BIA Advisory Services era (BIA Financial Network acquired Kelsey last week, adding …

J.D. Power and Associates’ annual Automotive Internet Roundtable is being held in Las Vegas, amid an industry that is being especially hard hit by the credit industry. A bunch of dealers at breakfast this morning estimated that “90 percent to 95 percent” of their sales are made on credit, and not much is going through …

Localeze biz dev head Gib Olander has a good piece in MediaPost in which he argues the need to refine local search marketing campaigns based on changing search behavior. In other words, the way people search and the terms they use need to be better recognized.
After providing some data that quantify the local search opportunity …

Google and Salesforce.com are using some of their market power to help local cultural institutions. Last week, while in San Francisco for Inman, I found “Tartuffe” by the African-American Shakespeare Co. when I searched “San Francisco” and “Theater.”
It was a great play, but it was a small production off the beaten path on the tip …

Over the past two months, we have been talking with sales reps in a variety of local media outlets who are selling search engine marketing. While we feel like some sales organizations are making headway in selling a significant volume of SEM products to their customers, we find that the technical aspects of SEM often …

Over the past several months, The Kelsey Group has been talking with a number of sales managers and directors of companies in the directory, newspaper and online space to understand the challenges of recruiting, hiring and training online reps. The sense from our interviews is that the market for skilled reps who understand and have …

Last week, we wrote about The Seattle Times Co. and its new “Network search,” which is powered with FAST. This week, we are covering The Boston Globe’s Boston.com and its new “Federated” search solution, powered by Google.
Federated and Network search are different names for pretty much the same thing. But even as the respective …

This year’s National Automobile Dealers Association convention in San Francisco, Feb. 9-12, reflected the tough times that have hit the industry. Themes at the show didn’t go much beyond the convention’s official title: “Focus on Profitability.”
But a sub-theme at the show was the transition of auto marketing to the Web, and the importance of …

Newspapers increasingly see an opportunity to sell SEO/SEM solutions to local advertisers. Such efforts probably began in earnest last year with members of the Yahoo! consortium using Yahoo!’s platforms. Others have been working with WebVisible and other resellers on a custom basis. But things seem to have been heating up, prior to the NAA Marketing …

Quick, what industry gets the highest customer service quality ratings from U.S. adult consumers, according to an August 2007 Harris Interactive poll? No. 1 is supermarkets with 92 percent giving them a good rating, No. 2 is online search engines (84 percent), and tied for No. 3 (78 percent) are computer hardware companies, hospitals and banks. My …

SEM reseller and campaign management firm ReachLocal today officially brought Google AdWords into its ad product toolbelt. This extends its offering to SMBs interested in search engine marketing or in cross-platform ad bundles. ReachLocal’s online offerings to SMBs also include Yahoo! (YSM), MSN (AdCenter), Ask and Superpages.
Many other SEM fulfillment firms that address the SMB …

Auto dealers and real estate brokers (and agents) are increasingly contending with mission creep for their Web needs that require them to have two or more Web sites. Part of the problem is that they must conform to standardized requirements. For instance, Ford, Toyota and Nissan dealers have a number of mandated requirements.
At the same …

While the other telcos have divested their Yellow Pages units, AT&T maintains that there is real synergy in pursuing a three-screen strategy. Rather than selling the YP unit and using the proceeds to build out its network, a la Verizon, AT&T is betting that there is a home field advantage in keeping its landline, mobile …

Google is simultaneously the most open and most shut business I can think of. On one hand, it is amazingly transparent. You walk around the two campuses in Mountain View and you can walk right by Larry and Sergey’s offices. During my short time there, I even spied CEO Eric Schmidt casually ambling by with …

Idearc has announced another distribution deal aimed at satisfying SMB demand for performance-based advertising on Superpages.com.

The latest deal involved Findology, a California-based company that operates the Zipcodez.com local search engine. Idearc will now place its PFP advertisers on the Zipcodez.com site. According to the press release, Zipcodez serves “3 billion searches per month.”

This deal continues a …

It is hard for me to comprehend, but we are finally finished with ILM:07. We were grateful to have had 650 interesting and enthusiastic attendees from all over the world, 72 stimulating speakers, a full load of sponsors and an excellent partnership with SES.
Our next conference, April 30-May 2 at the Westin in Seattle, will …

Jake Winebaum, president of RHDi and CEO of Business.com, a self-admitted neophyte in the local search space, shared his unique “new guy” perspective of the state of selling local search to small businesses at ILM:07. Now working for a large incumbent directory publisher, R.H Donnelley, Winebaum outlined a number of critical challenges and advantages of …